Caine Black Knife

Here’s the, the, the secret to great Acting-

give the people what they want.

So I finally let it out: the howling and the sobbing and shit, sure, she’s seen me cry already and she’s heard me moan and sob but here it is: I finally let it all hang out.

All the the begging for mercy.

All the pleading that she just fucking end it I don’t care anymore just make it stop-All the weak sad shit I’ve been sucking back and swallowing ever since I first saw that buck stand up in the badlands.

I give it up. I give it all up.

“I’ll tell you I swear I’ll tell you anything- it’s the Cauldron of Chi’iannon, all right? I know about it! I know! Please-just get me down-! Just make it stop. .”

Fading now: a broken whisper.

Broken like me.

“. . just get me down. I’ll tell you everything. . please. .”

And because she wields a piece of Reality in her right hand, she knows my pain is real. She knows my break is real.

She knows I’m telling the truth.

She goes to the big wheel-crank that controls the angle of my scaffold and turns it until my cross becomes a timber bed. A curl of contempt twists her lips around her tusks. She slashes the ropes that tie me to the cross with the filed-sharp fighting claw below her left hand. She leans across my face, and with the same hand she yanks on the spike through my right arm. The wood squeals as it comes free, and my arm comes with it and my shoulder’s silent roar is loud enough to grey out the universe.

Annnnnd. .

When the world comes to life, I’m off the cross.

Under my back-

— night-cold stone-

Oh god-

Oh god oh god I made it. I’m off the fucking cross.

I made it.

Thank you. Oh, thank you.

The night gathers force in my ears: roars and screams. Smell of burning shit and hair and rotten meat.

Pressure on my chest crushes my sobbing down to thick gasps, then to a choked hush. I open my eyes. It’s Crowmane’s foot.

Long as my forearm. Wide as my hand span. Toenails hooked enough to draw blood from my chest. Her eyes smoke yellow into the stars around her head. Reality pulses around her right hand. Talk now, little rabbit. Talk of this Chi’iannon’s Cauldron. Tell me how I stop it.

Shit.

Gahh. She left-

Fucking spikes’re still in my wrists-

And-ahh, fuck me, fuck me, she left my ankles nailed together, ahh, fuck-

Guess I can give right the hell up on that quick getaway.

Talk now, little rabbit.

So I meet her eyes and give her the truth I promised. “You can’t stop it.”

Without transition her huge foot is on my throat-so goddamn wide she’s breaking my sonofabitching neck-

Tell this again, little rabbit. Tell this for the last time.

If she weren’t crushing my throat right now, I’d tell her I love her.

With weakly trembling hands, I scrabble at her ankle, then let my arms fall back, right thrown across my face to mask what she’s got to think is despair.

Hands work. So do arms. Maybe even legs, if I can take the pain.

She did this for me. And I’m off the cross. She did that for me too.

I love her very, very much.

I don’t need Control Disciplines. The singing in my ears makes the night a wonderland of shimmer and fades the screams and roaring into a distant melody of blood.

Darling. . they’re playing our song. .

From behind my right elbow I manage some whimpering gasps around her huge clawed foot on my neck. “Y’can’t. . stop the spell-’s done-all y’can do. . ’s chop ’m up and burn ’m. .”

She leans over me, shifting weight onto the foot-wide paw on my neck. My cervical vertebrae pop and crackle as the ligaments stretch. Her drool drips down across my face. It smells of rot. Been too gentle with you, little rabbit.

I shift my left hand three inches. Her eyes never flicker. She didn’t pick up the motion. The heel of my left hand is now against the head of the spike through my right wrist.

Oh, my god, how I love this bitch.

Some ideas I save. Something special.

I love her so much, I’m going to fuck her.

Special just for little-

Right swinging backhand from my left armpit, left jamming like a short shovel-hook and I can’t get much on them but together I don’t need a whole hell of a lot. The spike through my right wrist spears deep into the side of her knee.

It grates on bone and I can’t tell if it’s mine or hers but I’m balls-up adrenoamped far beyond feeling any fucking pain.

She jerks like I clamped a high-tension line to her nipples and says-

“. . hurkk. .”

— and I give the head of the spike another good whack with the heel of my left hand, and this time the bone it grates on is the inside of her kneecap because when she yanks back her leg, the spike rips down and jams behind her patellar tendon, so her yank of the leg yanks me with it by the spike, which sits me up and plants her foot within the loop of my pinned-together legs and slams my battered nervous system hard enough to grey the world down by better than half-

But there is a fundamental difference between her and me. On the street, in the ring, on Adventure-so many times I’ve been half out or better, so greyed I didn’t know where my fucking legs were, hurt, cut, bleeding, having to use one hand to hang onto my guts while I try to cover my head with the other-

I can deal.

Crowmane, though-what is she? She’s no Marade, no Pretornio. She’s not even a Tizarre. When you carve all the way to nuts and guts, Crowmane’s just a bitch with a shitty attitude, playing games with somebody else’s power.

Which is why when some of the world is slipping back into focus she’s still screaming like a brain-damaged howler monkey and trying to shake me off her leg.

It’s only now that she remembers she’s got better than a hundred pounds on me and a razor-sharp fighting claw curving around the fist that is directly over my head.

All I can do is bring up my left as her right comes down and in the last infinitesimal fraction of a second I register the relationship between her fist and my forearm and an image blossoms and my forearm adjusts its angle without interference from my brain.

Her fist comes down. Her fighting claw spears into my trapezius and scrapes my collarbone but goes no deeper because my block braced my left forearm across my head which set the spike in that forearm against my skull like a spear grounded to receive a horseman’s charge.

The horseman, in this case, is Crowmane’s fist.

She takes the spike between the second and third knuckle and she jerks again, rearing up, yowling-